


Amissio

by MayCSB



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 15:05:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14499618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayCSB/pseuds/MayCSB
Summary: AmissioNounāmissiō f (genitive āmissiōnis); third declension1. LossFollows 06x01





	Amissio

**Amissio**

**Noun**  
**āmissiō f (genitive āmissiōnis); third declension**  
**1\. Loss**

**“Believe me,**  
**Believe me, this loneliness won't go away**  
**Hear me,**  
**Oh, woman that has gone astray**  
**Gone astray**  
**Your friends,**  
**Your friends will always just be in your way**  
**Trust me,**  
**They'll die or leave you, either way**  
**Either way”**

**Beekepeer - Keaton Henson**

———————————————————

_“It’s been two years since it happened. Two years since the day you told me you were unwell, since the night I first prayed to a god I never really believed in for your recovery, the night I cried myself to sleep because there was nothing I could do, no way to help you and no way to comfort you. You asked for peace and space and I felt I had no right to deny you those things. You never asked me for anything but that._

_The reality is that every day since then, I’ve missed you. A part of me accepted, right then, that missing you would be a feeling I was going to become very familiar with. I missed the man who sat by my bed and comforted me with his presence, the one who knew so little about giving and yet gave me everything I needed, always. The one who gave me the courage I needed to do something I really always needed to._

_There are things I always wanted to tell you, but that got lost, first in the infatuation and then in the sameness and then in the bitter sadness. I wanted to thank you, first of all. You wouldn’t ever believe me if I told you, but you taught me everything about love and partnership. About acceptance and friendship. About myself._

_I want to tell you that I knew from the moment I met you that you’d change me. It was one of those feelings people get in cheesy movies, that a certain person or moment is pivotal and it’s what it was. I grew with you and within you, I grew alongside you and I grew after you were gone. I could tell you about all the things you taught me, but I won’t, because I believe there are very few parts of me that weren’t somehow influenced by your presence or absence._

_You were an integral part of me and are a perpetual presence in my consciousness._

_Over the past two years I felt your absence like a burning in my body that wouldn’t go away._

_The doctors have assured me that there’s no way you’ll ever read these letters, not this one nor the many I’ve written before it, but I write to you as much as I do for myself. It’s been my only comfort as I’ve watched you fade, bit by bit, over the hell that were the last two years._

_So many parts of me went with those losses._

_The cruelty of it all hurts me the most._

_How I once asked you why you’d taken to calling me Joan, and you confessed, through thick and and quick tears, that you couldn’t remember what my last name was._

_How you called me, flustered and frustrated, to come pick you up, because you got lost and didn’t know how to work the GPS on your phone._

_The night I led you to your room and you called me Irene and asked which side of the bed I’d rather sleep on._

_How I went along with it because I couldn’t, wouldn’t, make you remember what it felt like to lose her._

_Your confusion when you woke up next to me._

_I remember those things with utter clarity, like sharp teeth that gnaw at me every time you cross my mind._

_Losing you is the worst thing I’ve ever faced._

_Like so many of the others, I write this letter from your bedside, watching you from where I sit by the window, hoping, in vain, that you’ll wake up, that everything will be fine, that everything will go back to normal._

_The doctors say you’re gone. That whatever you took - I’ve asked them not to tell me what it was - has rendered you essentially dead. But the reality is, you’ve been gone a long time._

_I don’t know how to move forward without you._

_Joan Watson_  
_August 22nd, 2020_  
_Letter 123/?”_

She’s pulled out of her reverie by a knock on the door - a familiar knock, that she recognizes as Dr. Schultz’ - and watches as the man walks into the room.

“Ms. Watson?” he calls, gently “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we just got word from Mr. Holmes’ father.”

She takes a deep breath then, a silent prayer for nothing in particular because there are no good choices, no easy decisions.

“He said the choice is yours,” he tells her “he’ll back whatever decision you make.”

She doesn’t know if it makes her resent Morland more or less.

She makes the decision she thinks he’d want her to.

———————————————————

“... he was an incredible man and all of us at Major Crimes will miss him terribly.” Captain Greyson finishes, holding back tears she knows he’d rather not escape, and steps away from the casket.

She walks up to where he was standing in a hurried step, feeling every bone in her body like weight she can’t lift, every breath like labor she can’t handle, every one of the eyes on her like a curse she can’t deal with.

“I’d like to thank all of you for being here tonight,” she starts “he’d hate it but I appreciate it.”

Watery chuckles emerge from the group, but it feels wrong, it all feels terribly wrong, because none of it was supposed to happen, she wasn’t supposed to be burying him at forty-one.

It’s all wrong.

“Sherlock was my partner. He was my mentor. He was my roommate. But above all and anything else, he was my friend.” She takes a deep breath “He was the greatest friend I ever had. Sherlock was frustrating, brash, rude. He was frequently unkind and often tone-deaf. He was an absolute asshole.” She smiles faintly “But he was also sensitive. He was caring, he was loving, he was supportive. He was the greatest man I’ve ever met.” She wants to say more but she physically can’t bring herself to, her body and mind are spent, she can’t do it anymore.

She’d let everyone know, when she sent out the invites, that they were supposed to leave before the coffin was lowered, and they do, as soon as they realize her speech is over, and she watches as the group walks to their cars, alone but for the funeral director, who patiently waits for her order to lower the coffin into the ground.

“Can I have a moment?” She asks the man, and he nods, walking away from her and watching his phone intently as he does.

“Sherlock,” she says, touching the firm wood that holds his body “it’s time. I have to let you go, she chokes back a sob “I want you to know...” she can’t do it anymore, can’t keep herself from crying, and so she just lets go, ignoring the tears that run down her face “I want you to know that I love you,” she says “that I love you and that I’ll miss you every day for the rest of my life.”

She breaks down completely then, her knees buckling and her body dropping to the ground as she rocks with the strength of her grief.

She doesn’t watch as the man lowers his body.

She can’t.

 

 


End file.
